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Brush Talks a Journal of China Vol BRUSH TALKS A Journal of China Vol. 4 No. 1 Winter/Spring 2019 Brush Talks: A Journal of China Vol. 4 | No. 1 | Winter/Spring 2019 Brush Talks Staff Founder & Editor Brian Kuhl (U.S.) Contributing Editors Duan Hongwei (段红伟, China) Yang Zhengxin (杨正昕, U.S.) Brush Talks publishes compelling nonfiction, along with photographs and occasional poetry, about China. We publish two issues per year and accept unsolicited submissions on a rolling basis. For more information, please visit brushtalks.com. Copyright © 2019 by Brian Kuhl. All rights reserved. Brush Talks is set in Garamond and produced in Adobe InDesign. Cover image: © 2016 by Stu Sontier (Pingyao, Shanxi) Because I had only my writing brush and ink slab to converse with, I call it Brush Talks. Shen Kuo 沈括 (1031–1095) Table of Contents Winter/Spring 2019 Jacob Rawson 9 Essay The Sound of Surf Wang Wei (王维) 17 Poem 竹里馆 [English translation follows] Shu Chutian (舒楚天) 19 Interview [Chinese version follows] Sima Guang (司马光) 40 Excerpt Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance Stu Sontier 41 Portfolio Pingyao Supernatural Li Bo (李白) 58 Poem 春思 [English translation follows] Editor’s Note Welcome to first issue ofBrush Talks for 2019, which marks the beginning of our fourth year. Readers of the past three issues know that we have been fortunate to share a series of essays by Jacob Rawson about his travels to China’s sacred mountains. This installment takes us to the coast of Zhejiang, where Mount Putuo beckons. For our interview, we talk with Shu Chutian about her photography and videography as she begins her career after completing an M.F.A. This issue’s portfolio showcases the ancient city of Pingyao, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Shanxi Province, as seen through the lens of photographer Stu Sontier. And our poetry selections conjure up nature in spring, with timeless imagery that is instantly recognizable despite being written fourteen centuries ago. What all these have in common is history, from ancient cities to imperial dynasties to enduring religions. Even the artwork of a newly minted graduate is infused with history, as she builds upon the work previously done by others, both continuing and adapting traditions in the field. In Chinese history, years ending in nine, like this one, call to mind significant anniversaries of the last century: 1919, 1949, 1989. But there are others as well, and this year marks exactly one thousand years since the birth of Sima Guang, one of China’s greatest historians. To commemorate him, we include an excerpt from his work Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance (资治通鉴). The conversation between the emperor and the imperial censor reminds us of the importance of history — transparent and unvarnished. Brian Kuhl Contributors Li Bo (李白, also romanized as Li Bai) lived from 701 to 762, during the Tang dynasty. He is widely considered among China’s best poets. Jacob Rawson is coauthor of the book Invisible China: A Journey Through Ethnic Borderlands. After completing a master’s degree in Chinese Linguistics at the University of Washington, he set out to climb the nine sacred peaks of China in 2010. His writings on South Korea have appeared in Fulbright Korea Infusion. He lives in Washington State with his wife and daughter. Shu Chutian (舒楚天) is an artist who recently completed her M.F.A. in Photography at Pratt Institute. Originally from Changsha, China, she currently lives in New York. Her website is chutianshu.org. Sima Guang (司马光) was a historian and official during the Song dynasty. He lived from 1019 to 1086. Stu Sontier is a photographer based in New Zealand. His photos that appear in this issue were taken on a trip to Pingyao, in Shanxi Province, in 2016. His website is stusontier.net and his Instagram handle is @stusontierphoto. Wang Wei (王维) was a poet and painter who lived during the Tang dynasty. Various sources give his date of birth as either 699 or 701 and his date of death as either 759 or 761. The Sound of Surf by Jacob Rawson Yellow-black mists cover sluggish water Suddenly the overcast sky breaks open: the sea turns red Who rides the wheel of fire through snow-white crested tide? Its red rays like arrows piercing a thousand peaks —Tu Long, 16th century, from “Twelve Famous Views of Mount Putuo” he slick new Harmony Line glides on its elevated steel bed above drizzly TZhejiang scenery. At 140 kilometers per hour, the fish farms and willows that droop over stream banks fade into an abstraction of enigmatic hues. Inside the train car, smartly dressed passengers sink into upholstered seats and watch movies on tablet computer screens while hooting and coughing into cell phones. In the money-flush port city of Ningbo, coal-black BMW and Mercedes Benz sedans prowl the sterile boulevards while well-heeled pedestrians quickstep through open-air shopping malls, their patent leather footwear making a rhythmic click-clack click-clack on the smooth granite promenade. As a light rain coats the asphalt and the air grows soft and musky, schoolboys duck under fruit stand awnings and I retreat into a retail center to pass the rain shower in a cineplex. Lala’s Promotion tells the story of a young woman who works for the Beijing branch of an American company. Conspicuously-placed Lenovo laptops and Lipton tea glasses frame a cursory love story that is wrapped up in an allegory of pure materialistic bliss. Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong would be rolling over in his . (darn it) air-conditioned mausoleum. * * * * 9 Brush Talks At a nondescript wharf on Ningbo’s industrial coastline, I find my flat- bottomed ferry, white characters meaning Seagull stenciled on its sky-blue hull. The vessel pushes off its concrete mooring and motors through the silty Qiantang River estuary past orange-hulled container ships and big red sea cranes. Buddhist-themed karaoke videos run on a large LCD panel bolted to a low bow partition, while septuagenarian pilgrims put hands together and heads down to pray to the digital bodhisattvas and glowing lyrics that scroll across the screen. Although I have shed endless tears Although I have eaten bitterness I still have a cherished desire To reciprocate Buddha’s grace In step with the music, the Seagull moves from the river mouth into the open East China Sea and begins to sway in the mounting swell. We glide past lighthouses perched on rocky outcrops, little windowless concrete cylinders with no sign of human occupants. Impossibly buoyant rusted-out fishing vessels list in the wake of an iron-hulled freighter. A fully laden cargo ship sags in front of dusty stone quarries carved out of a once-green coastline, while an empty container ship bares its rudder naked to the wind, its steel ballast just visible below the waterline. I have come to this coastal region in search of the next sacred mountain, which is not really a mountain at all. Mount Putuo is the name of a small island in the East China Sea, some fifteen nautical miles from the Chinese mainland. The peculiar name makes a bit more sense in etymological context: Mount Putuo is the Chinese transliteration of the Sanskrit Mount Potalaka, the mythical home of the Avalokiteśvara bodhisattva. While this bodhisattva is depicted in male form in much of the Buddhist world, she has become a female figure in the Mayahana Buddhism of East Asia. Known as the Goddess of Mercy, she is perhaps the most widely revered bodhisattva in Korea as 10 The Sound of Surf Gwan-eum, in Vietnam as Quan Âm, in Japan as Kannon, and in China as Guanyin. Guanyin is indeed the patron bodhisattva of this mountain-island, and as I step off the rolling gangplank and onto solid asphalt, I look across rows of vendors selling images of her stoic grin and flowing robes, fabricated from plastics, ceramics, and stone. I sit with the street vendors and inhale a breakfast of rice porridge with “bodhisattva biscuits,” then saunter around the coastal road to a small peninsula that holds such tourist delights as the Giant Statue of Guanyin and the Purple Bamboo Forest. My interest lies in the Cave of Tidal Sounds, where for the past millennium pilgrims have reported seeing apparitions of Guanyin. Just outside the attraction, a large stone tablet proclaims It is Forbidden to Offer One’s Life and Singe the Fingers. A tour guide standing nearby tells her disinterested group that this Ming Dynasty tablet was erected to dispel rumors circulating at the time that devout pilgrims should burn their fingers and ultimately leap into the cave as a fatal act of devotion to Guanyin. The Cave of Tidal Sounds itself is a narrow opening in a cliff where waves enter a small passage between rocks and rush in between twenty-foot-high walls before crashing inside the cave opening. The residual splash bursts out above the opening, lending an air of pomp to the already boisterous pilgrim scene. Those who had given up on their hopes of seeing Guanyin strike martial arts poses on top of rock formations, asking monks to take their pictures. As the waves work their way back under the cliff, there is another smaller opening, and this is where the pilgrims of past centuries tossed themselves down the thirty- foot-deep hole to show their devotion. A body thrown into the hole had little chance of surviving, and even a strong swimmer would be powerless against the jarring current that swirls violently below. The slick vertical walls afford no handholds, and it is a long way down to the sea floor.
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